It seemed like risky business for Gina Gershon to film love scenes with Tom Cruise while his new bride was on set.
Gershon looked back on filming her first ever love scene opposite Cruise on the set of the 1988 romance Cocktail during a recent appearance on Watch What Happens Live, sharing with host Andy Cohen that her costar’s first wife, fellow actress Mimi Rogers, “was very present.”
“He had just gotten married,” Gershon said, quipping, “But we did kiss as much as we could. Every scene it was like, ‘Should we kiss in the scene?’ ‘Oh yeah, I think we should kiss.’ It was my first love scene ever.”
“And did he take care of you?” Cohen asked.
“Totally,” Gershon replied, calling Cruise a “gentleman” before relaying a familiar anecdote about believing that she had broken his nose while filming the love scene. “At one point, he starts off under the covers, and I told him I was very ticklish, I said, ‘No, no, don’t ever do that.’”
During a take, “I think he wanted a reaction,” Gershon said. “And he grabbed my stomach, and I kneed him right in t he nose. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I just broke Tom Cruise’s nose.’ He’s like, ‘No, no, you told me.’ I was like, ‘I’m so sorry,’ he was like, ‘No, it was my fault.’”
“He was so overprotective over me. He was great,” Gershon added.
Cruise was married to Rogers, known for her roles in films Gung Ho and Someone to Watch Over Me, between 1987 and 1990.
From director Roger Donaldson, Cocktail followed Cruise who played an ambitious young bartender who opens a bar in Jamaica and falls in love with an artist played by Elisabeth Shue. The romance dramedy also starred Bryan Brown, Laurence Luckinbill, and Lisa Banes.
During her appearance on WWHL, Gershon was on hand to promote her new action sci-fi film Borderlands with costar Cate Blanchett, who got a kick out of the latter’s Cruise anecdotes. Based on the best-selling video game series of the same name, Borderlands follows a ragtag team of misfits who band together to battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits in the planet of Pandora.
“I wanted to make something totally bonkers and bats— crazy that has the insanity of The Fifth Element or Escape From New York,” director Eli Roth said in EW’s Borderlands cover story for Comic-Con. “I think there’s a spirit of anarchy and absurdity in the game. I wanted the movie to have that same spirit as well: a movie completely made by lunatics.”